


Cold

by Augustus



Category: Backstreet Boys, Popslash
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-07-21
Updated: 2002-07-21
Packaged: 2018-03-09 14:00:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3252404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Augustus/pseuds/Augustus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Night time, a balcony and a whole lotta discontent. Nick POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold

The stars still look the same. Icy winter air wraps around me, plucking my skin into disgruntled goosebumps and coaxing my body into intermittent shivers, my clothing providing little barrier against the wind. Above me, the sky is dark and cloudless, tiny specks of starlight strewn across the horizon and stretching irregularly into the corners of my vision. There's nothing new in the glimmer of bright on dull, in the arrangement of black and not-black. Even the curve of the moon is a tedious repeat of long-ago evenings.

I feel as though the night should be different. The wind should beat a new pattern against the windowpanes, twisting my hair into tangled shapes of originality and pressing my clothes tightly against me as the length of my coat flaps a fresh rhythm around the swirling fabric of my legs. Beneath me, the lights should glitter a stronger shade of garish, a neo-tangle of reds and golds and antiseptic white. And the stars should be brighter, larger, sleepy-shimmering reflections of the here and the now and the floating frostiness of my breath.

Nothing.

I wrap my arms around myself, shuddering into the wind as I stare up at the changeless freckles of mocking light. Despite the lights below me, despite the clash and tangle clamour of voices in the hotel room behind me, I feel alone and silent and faded by the cold. My fringe lashes my forehead with intricate ice kisses as I lean forward to claim the steel crutch of the balustrade with winter-clumsy fingers.

"What's up?" Kevin's voice grates, aptly placed beside the screech and clatter of the French doors. "It's freezing out here."

"Really?" I glare at the speckled horizon, sarcasm shaping and thinning my lips. "I hadn't noticed."

Footsteps, and then his body is pressed against me, a warm streak down the middle of my back. His arms circle my waist and I can feel the weight of his head pressing unwanted heat into my shoulder. "What's up?" he repeats, breath sliding intrusively through the thick fabric of my collar. "I'm not going back inside until you tell me what's going on."

"They should be different."

"What should?" he asks, infuriatingly patient as always.

"The stars."

His fingers slide through a gap between the buttons of my coat. "Why's that?"

"They should be brighter. We're famous now, right? Then why aren't they brighter?"

"Perhaps they are. Maybe you just can't see it." Kevin's lips tickled the side of my neck. 

Turning, I slide within his grasp, locking gaze with gaze and shrinking into his warmth. "Don't you ever feel alone?"

"Not when I'm with you, Nicky."

It's a line, as cliched as any other, but it flows through me like flame and melts me, pliant, into his embrace. His mouth brushes against my forehead and I bury my head in the curve of his neck, pressing my nose against warm and scented skin. I shut my eyes to block out the sky and the drying breath of the wind and concentrate on the soft-hard roll of his pulse. Beneath my eyelids, the stars swell and shimmer and multiply.

"Come inside," he says, breath parting and flattening my hair. 'The others will be wondering where we are." 

I blink, shiver, rub away the stars with stiffened fingers. "I think I'll stay out here for a little longer."

He nods. Understands. "Don't get frostbite," he smiles, taking the father from the words with a gentle show of teeth. He kisses me, properly, tongue sickly-hot against my own as he knots fingers within my hair. More quietly he whispers, "And don't feel alone. I'm always here, remember?"

I smile and mutter an okay, turning my back as he returns to the party, a slice of noise strangling the night for the seconds it takes for him to slide the door open and closed. Raising a hand to my lips I dig nails into the flesh, scraping away the memory of heat and closeness and someone being _there_. I need to feel the cold again, not the safe continuity of Kevin's unadorned affections.

I tug my coat from my shoulders, raise my eyes to the impassive sky and dare the stars to change.

**21st July 2002**


End file.
